Scherly Gomez left, recently earned her bachelor's degree from Lipscomb University in Nashville with the help of Equal Chance for Education. With her is Miriam Caravez, another graduate of the program.(Photo: Equal Chance for Education - submitted photo)

Twenty students with immigration problems are expected to enroll at the University of Memphis this fall, with assistance from a new private scholarship program.

The students were brought to the country illegally as children or on visas that later expired. The scholarships are backed by Equal Chance for Education, a Nashville-based nonprofit.

The 20 students at the University of Memphis, recruited from Kingsbury High and other Memphis high schools, will be among 152 scholarship students the organization is sponsoring statewide, said Molly Haynes, executive director for the scholarship program.

Most of those 152 students have been approved for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a federal program that President Donald Trump could end through executive order.

A few were DACA eligible but hadn't enrolled because of concerns about the program's future, Haynes said. But they plan to go ahead now that it appears Trump will leave the program in place.

Even when the situation looked even more unclear a few months ago, Equal Chance for Education was continuing to enroll scholarship students.

"I think that we were just pretty positive that common sense would prevail in this situation," Haynes said. The government has already screened hundreds of thousands of people through the program and they're contributing members of society, she said.

The scholarships allowing the 20 students to go to the University of Memphis illustrate a broader story: even as the country's immigration policies remain unsettled, many young people with immigration problems are going about their lives.

And private institutions and foundations are working to expand their educational opportunities.

President Barack Obama created DACA in 2012. It's a limited legalization program for young people whose parents violated immigration law bringing them into the country. Many of them speak fluent English and have lived most of their lives in the U.S.

The program grants them federal work documents, but Tennessee public universities have historically not granted them in-state tuition or most scholarships. And DACA generally does not lead to legal residency or citizenship.

During last year's presidential campaign, Trump said he would end DACA.

No one at the University of Memphis was available to talk this week about the implementation of the scholarship program.

Equal Chance for Education was launched by Dr. Michael Spalding a retired Nashville urologist. He said he was inspired to help after he learned that his housekeeper's daughter couldn't go to a Tennessee university at the in-state tuition rate.

Spalding put his own money toward the cause and gathered donations from other individuals and foundations.

Five students have graduated from college under the program so far since its launch in 2014, Haynes said.

One of them is Scherly Gomez whose first name is pronounced like "Shirley." She recently graduated from Lipscomb University in Nashville and is about to start studies to become a physician at Meharry Medical College in that city.

She said she wants to become a doctor because she always loved science and because she wants to help the Hispanic population and other underserved groups.

She said she hopes the law will open up a path to citizenship for people like her - she was brought to this country at age eight from Honduras and currently has Deferred Action status.

"I know that President Trump recently announced that he wasn't going to cancel for right now, but there's always that lingering fear that it one day can be cancelled, and then to look back and see that all the hard work would be for nothing," she said.

"My hope would be people in the legislature would understand that we're here to stay and we want to help the community grow and improve and we can't do that if we're very limited."

The other universities participating in the Equal Chance for Education program are Cumberland University in Lebanon and several Nashville institutions: Belmont University, Lipscomb University, Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, Trevecca Nazarene University and Vanderbilt University.

Also new to the program this year is Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro - details still being worked out, Haynes said, and a student in the program just graduated from Fisk University in Nashville.

This fall, Christian Brothers plans to enroll a cohort of 20 more students in that program, as well as to enroll 31 freshmen and 11 transfer students from outside Tennessee through a national program called TheDream.Us.

Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.